She studied his scarred face, considering his words. He clearly hadn’t expected her to travel to Louisville, but he’d been willing to use her arrival to his advantage. Just perfect.
“You sent the postcard,” she said.
“I arranged to have it delivered,” he corrected. “And then I traveled here to prepare for your arrival. Including a visit to your lover’s home to ensure I could bypass his security system.” He reached out to press his finger to a spot on the side of her neck. A small pain jolted through her. “I injected you with a little happy juice and I carried you out the balcony and through the garden. Simple as pie.”
She flinched in disgust at his touch. His fingers felt cold against her skin, clammy. Like a fish.
“Why would you kidnap me?” she rasped.
He frowned, annoyed by her reaction. “You know why.”
“No, I truly don’t understand,” she breathed.
He narrowed his gaze. “Maybe you don’t.” Without warning he grabbed her chin and roughly forced back her head. He studied her like she was a bug beneath a microscope. “You look so much like your mother.”
She tried to jerk away from him, only to gasp when he squeezed hard enough to send shooting pain through her jaw.
“So I’ve been told,” she managed to say.
He continued to study her. “But you have your father’s smile. Or should I say our father.”
She stilled, all thoughts of murder and mayhem forgotten as she met his gaze. The pale eyes shimmered with an inner emotion Ronnie could barely contain. Anticipation?
“What did you say?” she forced herself to ask.
“Our father,” he repeated.
“Our?”
“Stuart Jacobs was my father,” he said. “And you, sweet Carrie, are my sister.”
Ronnie sat back on his heels, watching the stunned emotions that rippled over her face with avid fascination. Carmen barely noticed. She was grappling with his outrageous claim.
Stuart Jacobs was the father of Ronnie Hyde?
She mentally repeated the words over and over, trying to let them sink into her brain.
They refused to penetrate.
Maybe she was being foolish. After all, her father had murdered her mother. He was obviously capable of any atrocity. Including denying the existence of his own child despite the fact he practically lived beneath his own roof.
But Carmen shook her head. Whatever her father’s faults, there’d never been a second when he hadn’t been devoted to her. There was no way he would have treated his child with such a cold disdain.
“That’s impossible,” she muttered.
Ronnie’s face settled into sullen lines. As if he was disappointed by her reaction.
“Of course the precious princess would assume it was impossible,” he sneered.
She flinched at the venom in his voice. Why hadn’t she seen the bitterness that stewed deep inside him?
“My father would never . . .” Her words trailed away as his fingers dug into her face with bruising force.
“What?” he snapped, an ugly flush crawling beneath his skin. “Have sex with a mere housekeeper?”
“He would never have denied his own son,” she said, blinking back the tears of pain. She didn’t know if Ronnie realized he was hurting her, but she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of seeing her cry. “Unless you’re claiming he didn’t know?”
Ronnie released his hold on her chin and surged upright. He stared down at her with a brooding expression.
“Let me tell you a story,” he said.
She released a silent breath of relief. Not just because the pain in her chin eased, but because the longer the crazy, delusional man talked, the longer Griff would have to find her.
“What kind of story?” she asked in what she hoped was encouraging tones. To her ears it sounded like a squawk.
Ronnie shoved his hands into the front pockets of his jeans, aimlessly circling the small open space. They were at the back of the warehouse in an equipment bay. On each side of them were large forklifts. She assumed they were used to move the heavy stacks of lumber.
Ronnie, however, strolled across the cement like he was an actor crossing the stage. Carmen had a sudden suspicion that he’d desperately longed for the spotlight even when he was hiding in the bushes.
“It’s about a young, foolish woman who was born to a poor family,” he said with a dramatic flourish of his hands. “She didn’t have parents who indulged her every whim. Instead, she had to go to work when she was just seventeen in the fancy house on the edge of town.”
“Your mother?”
“My poor, innocent mother.” He sent her another one of those bitter glances. As if he blamed her for his mother’s lack of fortune. “She came to the house to work, but she was promptly seduced by the rich owner.”
Carmen frowned. She could still remember the way her father looked at her mother. Blatant adoration.
There’d been nothing of that when he was in the same room as the housekeeper. She didn’t think the two of them even spoke unless it was for her father to ask Ellen to perform some household task.
Surely there would have been some lingering affection if the two had been lovers?
“Why would she stay if my father took advantage of her?”
His features contorted with fury before he was visibly struggling to control his temper. Long minutes passed, his harsh breath the only sound to break the thick silence.
At last he regained control of his composure.
“This is my story,” he snapped.
She used his anger as an excuse to scoot away from his looming form, pressing her back against the wall. Not that she had to pretend to be afraid. Ronnie Hyde was scaring the crap out of her.
“I’m sorry.”
As if he was soothed by the sight of her cowering on the floor, Ronnie sniffed and returned to his pacing.
“Once she discovered she was pregnant, she couldn’t expect the man to do the honorable thing and marry her,” he said, the words falling smoothly from his lips. Carmen suspected he’d rehearsed this speech a hundred times. Maybe a thousand. “She was a servant. A nobody.”
“She had his child and stayed on as his housekeeper?” she asked.
He sent her an annoyed glance. “What else could she do? She had to support herself and her child.”
She paused. She didn’t want to anger him. He was obviously demented. And while she didn’t know if he was personally involved with the killings, or why he would be fixated on her, she didn’t doubt he would happily bash in her head, just like those poor women in Kansas.
Still, she had to keep him busy with his performance.
So long as he was enacting his grand tragedy, he wasn’t doing whatever awful thing he had planned for her.
“Did your mother tell you this story?” she finally asked.
He waved a dismissive hand. “Of course not. She was still infatuated with her lover. She would do anything to protect him.”
“Then my father told you?” she breathed in disbelief.
His hands clenched. “Our father,” he insisted. “And no, he wouldn’t never tell me the truth. He pretended I was invisible.”
She stared at him in confusion. His pain seemed so genuine, but she didn’t understand why he was so certain that he was a Jacobs.
Of course, her brain wasn’t functioning at full steam. Perhaps she was missing something obvious.
“So why do you believe my—” The words stuck on her lips. She swallowed and forced herself to continue. “Stuart was your father?”
“It was simple. I always knew there must be a reason my mother refused to talk about my father.” A tic pulsed in his jaw, his emotions swaying from self-pity to smug arrogance in the blink of an eye. “It could have been because he was a total loser. After all, she let Andrew hang around. A woman who would invite that lazy prick into her home obviously has no taste in men.”
“Andrew was always very kind to me,”
she said before she could halt the words.
“Like he had a choice?” Ronnie sneered. “You were the princess. I was just the bastard.”
She licked her lips. Had Andrew been violent to Ronnie? She couldn’t remember seeing any visible bruises or broken bones when they were young, but who knew what went on behind locked doors? It might help to explain why Ronnie had grown up to be a psychopath.
“I still don’t understand,” she told him.
He came to a halt, his chin tilted to an aggressive angle. “It’s simple. I refused to believe that I was the product of some lowlife who couldn’t keep his pants zipped.” He offered a dramatic pause. “I was special.”
“And you decided if you were special you had to be a Jacobs?”
He glared at her, easily sensing her disbelief. Did he assume that she would simply agree with his wild fantasy?
“I suspected it,” he said in defiant tones. “And I wasn’t alone. There were others who could see my resemblance to Stuart.”
“Who?”
He slashed his hand through the air with a sudden burst of irritation.
“It doesn’t matter. I don’t need anyone to tell me what I already know.” A hard smile twisted his lips. “Not after I discovered the letters.”
“What letters?”
The glitter of anticipation returned to his eyes as he pointed a finger at her.
“Wait here,” he commanded before he was heading out of the bay.
Like she had a choice? The drugs Ronnie had injected into her continued to flow through her bloodstream, making her body lethargic.
There was the sound of a nearby door being pulled open. Maybe an office? She couldn’t be lucky enough for Ronnie to actually leave her alone in the warehouse.
With a muttered curse, Carmen leaned her head against the wall. Her brain was spinning and there was a sickness sloshing through her stomach, but she tried to put her scrambled thoughts in order.
She was certain Ronnie Hyde was insane. Just the fact that he’d drugged her and carried her to this warehouse was proof of that.
But what was his connection to the killers? Was he an active participant or just a flunky who was being used by others? He hardly seemed a mastermind criminal.
And what was her connection? Was his obsession with her because he had some crazed notion that they were related? Or did it have something to do with her book?
Ronnie and whoever else was involved had been copying the killers she’d profiled. And what did he intend to do with her now?
The questions swirled round and round, picking up speed until Ronnie suddenly returned. Walking forward with a triumphant smile, he gripped a stack of envelopes in one hand. He continued forward, standing directly next to her as he tossed the envelopes onto her lap.
She warily opened the top envelope and pulled out a yellowed sheet of paper that was stained and wrinkled. As if it’d been handled a hundred times over the years.
“Where did you get these?” she asked.
He hesitated, almost as if he didn’t want to answer. “They were hidden in my mother’s room,” he finally muttered.
There was a strange edge to his voice. As if he was lying.
But why?
With a shake of her head, she concentrated on unfolding the paper. She glanced at the words at the top.
My glorious Ellen.
Ellen. Her stomach clenched. Ronnie’s mother. Quickly her gaze lowered to the bottom of the letter.
Your adoring lover, Stuart.
Her father.
Good. God. Was it possible?
Had her father actually had an affair with his housekeeper? Had he allowed her to give birth to his son and then treated them both as servants while he married and had a daughter?
Sickened by the thought, she allowed her gaze to drift down the letter. It took a few lines to realize that the words seemed familiar. Not that she’d ever received a love letter that was filled with poetry about her beauty, or the desperation to stroke his fingers over her silken skin. But still, there was something . . .
Carmen sucked in a shocked gasp.
She knew why this letter was familiar. It was an exact replica of the love letter her father had written to her mother.
With shaky hands she pulled out another letter. She skimmed over the words, easily able to recognize the flamboyant declarations of love. It was another duplicate.
So what did that mean?
Did her father have a copy of the letters stashed in his desk to send to whatever woman he happened to be having sex with?
It seemed the most reasonable answer. Then she paused, her brows knitting together as she belatedly realized that the letters weren’t exact duplicates.
She bowed her head, studying the heavy, sloping handwriting that didn’t look anything like her father’s light, elegant strokes.
The words might have been copied, but it hadn’t been by Stuart Jacobs.
“My father didn’t write these,” she breathed.
“Liar,” Ronnie snarled in fury.
Carmen lifted her head, her lips parted to explain that the handwriting didn’t match. But before she could say a word, Ronnie was swinging his hand downward, slapping her face with enough force to send her sprawling across the cement floor.
* * *
Even knowing it was a waste of time, Griff searched the house top to bottom for any sign of Carmen. Then he searched again. His brain simply refused to accept that she’d been stolen from his bed.
A great protector I turned out to be, he acknowledged in disgust.
He was in his study running a diagnostic on his security system when there was a knock on his front door.
Griff surged to his feet and raced through the house. He hadn’t expected the cops to be so quick. Maybe Rylan had called the chief to insist on swift action.
He yanked open the door, and his eyes widened in shock.
It wasn’t a cop standing on the porch. In fact, it was the last person he’d expected to see.
His brain stalled, the electronic impulses firing, but refusing to connect. Pure instinct took over as he reached out to grab the man by his tailored leather jacket. Then, with one mighty heave, he was yanking the unwelcome visitor into the house and slamming him against the nearby wall.
“Where is she?” he growled.
Matthew Jacobs flushed, his eyes wide with shock. “What the hell?”
Griff wasn’t fooled for a second by the man’s pretense of confusion. There was no way his arrival was a coincidence.
No. Way.
He moved one hand upward, wrapping his fingers around Matthew’s throat.
“Tell me,” he commanded.
Matthew lifted his hands to grab Griff ’s wrist, his face flushed. Did he think that Griff was stupid? That he wouldn’t connect him to Carmen’s disappearance?
“Easy, man,” he rasped, making a choked noise of distress as Griff tightened his grip. “Christ. Are you high or just crazy?”
Griff narrowed his gaze. He wanted to keep squeezing until the bastard confessed where he’d taken Carmen, but with an effort he forced himself to study the man’s frightened expression.
If he killed him, then he couldn’t reveal where they’d taken Carmen. For now he had to play the stupid game.
Matthew was here for a reason. And until the man had gotten what he’d come for, Griff assumed he wasn’t going to get the answers he needed.
“Why are you here?”
He hesitated, staring at Griff with a wary anger. Then, perhaps sensing his life was hanging in the balance, he licked his lips.
“My dad sent me to California to check on our warehouse,” he said.
Griff frowned. He’d gone through the Jacobses’ business records. Now he shuffled through his memories, trying to determine if Matthew was lying. He recalled the list of properties. There’d been seven stores. Three of them in Kentucky, the others dotted around the Midwest. But there’d also been warehouses. One on the East Coast and two on th
e West Coast.
Which meant there might be one nearby.
“Why are you checking on it?” he demanded, still convinced Matthew was connected to Carmen’s disappearance.
“Someone used our private code to enter the office in the warehouse two nights ago.”
“So?”
“We have a special code for all our properties that allows us to override the security.”
When Griff had met Matthew Jacobs, his first impression was that the younger man was an arrogant douchebag.
His impression hadn’t changed.
“Special code?”
“My father doesn’t trust anyone,” he admitted. “He wanted to be able to enter any store or warehouse without giving notice to the managers or guards he was going to arrive and check out the books, or do a surprise inventory. So each property has a code that overrides the alarms so he can come and go without attracting attention.” Matthew gave a lift of his shoulder. “Only three of us have that code. My father, Baylor, and me.”
Griff didn’t have any trouble believing that Lawrence Jacobs felt it necessary to spy on his employees. He wasn’t the sort of man who could earn loyalty. He would have to bully and threaten his staff to keep them in line.
But he wasn’t so willing to believe the shallow, self-centered Matthew would jump on a plane and travel across the country just because a private code had been punched into the security system.
They no doubt had guards at the warehouse who could investigate what had happened.
“And that made you travel all the way to California?” He shook his head. “Bullshit.”
Matthew’s gaze darted from side to side, as if hoping someone might magically appear to distract Griff. When it became obvious that there was no help on the way, he grimaced.
“In my inner pocket.”
Griff stared at him with blatant suspicion. “What?”
“Just reach beneath my jacket and pull out the paper.”
A trap? Hard to believe that he had anything in his jacket that could be a threat. After all, if he had a weapon he would want to keep it hidden.
Griff’s fingers continued to press into Matthew’s throat. “You even twitch and I’ll snap your neck,” he warned.